Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump archive 2004-09-26

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Camembert (talk | contribs) at 00:08, 23 July 2003 (whoops). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

[[da:Wikipedia:Landsbybr%F8nden]]

File:Village pump.JPG

Related pages: Mailing lists - IRC - IM a Wikipedian - Talk pages - Reference desk

Welcome, newcomers and baffled oldtimers! If you have a question about Wikipedia and how it works, please place it at the bottom of the list, and someone will attempt to answer it for you. (If you have a question about life, the universe and everything, go to the reference desk instead.)

Before asking a question, check if it's answered by the Wikipedia:FAQ or other pages linked from Wikipedia:Help.

Before answering a newcomers question abruptly, consider rereading Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers

NOTE - questions and answers will not remain on this page indefinitely (otherwise it would very soon become too long to be editable). After a period of time with no further activity, information will be moved to other relevant sections of the wikipedia (such as the FAQ pages) or placed in the Wikipedia:Village pump archive if it is of general interest, or deleted. Please consider dating and titling your discussions so as to facilitate this.

Moved discussion

See the archive for older moved discussion links.

Orphan images

Do we have a non auto-generated page (I know about Special:Unusedimages) for listing orphaned images that might be titled something like Wikipedia:Images in need of Wikipedia articles? Mintguy 16:48 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I just had a look at Special:Unusedimages, and saw that it's full of images with text in foreign languages. Supposedly, some of them are actually used by the other languages. We should get the ambassadors to resolve that situation. -Smack 21:44 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)



U.S. State articles

Comments please to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. States/mockups. (I seem to be making a lot of requests for comments - perhaps we need Wikipedia:Requests for comments? :-) -- Wapcaplet 12:55 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comments has been created. Please list your requests for comments there. Comments please to Wikipedia talk:Requests for comments. -- Wapcaplet 13:11 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I recently had cause to insert a link to a film/movie/motion picture entitled "Butterfly". I realize that links to movie titles may be fruitless and may remove it, but in the meantime what is the convention for namespaces? I assume it is something along the lines of: MOVIE-NAME (film). — sugarfish 19:40 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That's an much debated issue. Some people use movie, some film. I see movie more often, though. CGS 19:52 17 Jul 2003 (UTC).

Single database

I can see limitations to wikipedia.org, and also current problems; They have to do with the wikipedian design, and maybe someone could just see if my arguments are valid. Would it benefit wikipedia.org, wiktionary.org, any other wikis on the planet, to instead have one "wiki", that instead of just a website, it is a database, with different reports/interfaces to it? So the ONE wiki holds ALL the data for everything, it would centralize edits, create more content faster, create more quality content faster, and people could come up with all sorts of neet reports: Dictionary, Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, they'd all be queries to the database. I think this interoperability would be great...

BTW: wiktionary.org appears to be far less developed than wikipedia. Perhaps this "merging" of technologies would cause the wiktionary idea to become more of a success.

Then again, I could be nuts. --Daijoubu

It's not obvious that having a single database would make anything faster, but besides that, it would require a lot of work. There's no serious software development going on of any kind at the moment, due to a lack of interested programmers.
Wikipedia is 5 times older than Wiktionary. Plus Wikipedia is more interesting, so it attracts more contributors. -- Tim Starling 15:03 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think this is addressed on meta somewhere. Martin

Illustrated Wikipedia

Discussion moved to User:Wapcaplet/WikiPiki. Please see WikiProject Illustration for an alternative idea. Comments welcome! -- Wapcaplet 02:52 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

standalone software

Is there stand-alone software (i.e. not browser-based) available for creating/editing Wikipedia entries? For example, that expedites the link-creation process, is WYSIWYG? I've scoured the 'pedia and haven't found a reference to any. —Frecklefoot 18:06 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It'd be very useful. When I'm not using public 'puter, I use Microsoft FrontPage, which is not ideal because HTML and stuff. --Menchi 18:12 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
To append the earlier question: Is there any interest in such a (free) program? —Frecklefoot 19:52 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
A GUI tool would be useful in that it would generate correct markup, but can't it be browser based? Users could either choose to use the current text box source editor, or a graphic editor using DHTML. CGS 20:16 18 Jul 2003 (UTC).
A syntax file for a text editor is all you need. I've been meaning to do one for EditPlus for a while but haven't got around to it yet. I think User:Tim Starling already did one for ... er ... Vi. Tannin
I don't understand: a syntax file only dictates how the source should be colour highlighted in the editor - it doesn't provide a GUI editor. Editors like Vi can only deal with the text source. You could write some macros for Emacs that did things like made the selected text a link - but you would still be looking at the source, and how useful is a macro that just inserts [[..]] around your selection? CGS 10:15 19 Jul 2003 (UTC).
Lots of good, CGS. You can see at a glance if you have got your syntax right. For example, how many times have you had to re-edit a page because you wrote [[Wikipedia:Village pump] when you meant to write Village pump? With a good text editor and a syntax file, your mistake is highlighted in colour and you can spot it right away. Tannin
What you want is a m:Wikipedia Client. It's been proposed but no-one's written one. There's an HTML→Wiki convertor, so you could write the text in an HTML editor and convert it. Unfortunately that doesn't do what I think is most sorely needed: a wikification aid allowing you to quickly determine whether a given page exists, what it redirects to if anything, and whether or not it's a disambiguation page. See Wikipedia:Syntax highlighting for my Vim (not Vi) highlighting file. -- Tim Starling 10:27 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I, and 4 others are currently working on a Python API which could be used by anyone to make software which interacts with wikipedia. If you are interested please send me an e-mail.

Meetup

move to meta:Wikipedia meetup's talk page

FYI, I found this neat weikipedia enthuseists website at http://wikipedia.meetup.com/ MB 21:02 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

read meta:meetup
I tried doing as suggested, and "read meta:meetup" but there is nothing there. I will put a link there, but I really don't see the point in pointing people to a non-existent page. MB 22:39 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
It think it was supposed to be meta:Wikipedia meetup. I've made the other into a redirect. -- Merphant 07:19 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

¡HELP!

How can I get rid of the bloody Nostalgia skin? I just tried it on but now I can't find a Preferences button anywhere! Help will be immensely appreciated. - Piolinfax 21:59 18 Jul 2003 (UTC) You can leave me a message in User talk:Piolinfax. Ta! - Piolinfax 22:12 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hidden blocked IP address?

I believe my IP address has been banned because I swamped the server with a script. (It was retrieving and not updating, but being automated I suppose it qualifies as a bot. I thought it was slow enough, but apparently not.) Strangely, though, my IP address does not show up in Special:Ipblocklist. How do I go about verifying that is what happened, and perform appropriate apologies and grovelling to get re-instated? Thanks for any advice. -- Amillar 19:16 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

As far as I know, it's only possible to block an ip from changing articles, not from reading them, although I could be wrong, probably better for someone else to answer that. (As for retrieving, it should be possible to download the whole (slightly outdated) database from Wikipedia:Database_download, if you have a few gigabytes to spare. 149mb without article history, compressed. Don't know how much, uncompressed.) כסיף Cyp 07:18 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Yes, it is possible to block a user from reading articles. The rest of my reply is on User talk:Amillar. -- Tim Starling 11:29 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
BTW the cur table is 640MB uncompressed. Old is 8.2 GB. If you're a sysop you can find this out by running the SQL query "SHOW TABLE STATUS". -- Tim Starling 11:53 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the tips on the database. As to the blocked IP address, I still have no answers. Who should I contact next? -- Amillar 16:27 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Military Science or Space Exploration?

I'm considering making an entry, but I'm not sure which category to put it in. The exploration of space is a multi-category field - trying to pin it down to one science is impossible. Between electronics, astro-physics, life support, etc. etc. etc.; forget it. However, let's assume for a moment that we're actually going to send people to the stars. Add to that assumption the slight possibility of our brave explorers voyaging to a planet, and find themselves as the main course of an alien family... Enter Military Science (or military applications of pre-existing science, in most cases.) While I'm not in favor of the military leading our little expedition, I'm leary about not having any kind of protection from unknown species. Now, the entry(ies??) would be sound, scientifically-based, although I would link to (and probably add) some non-inertial theories of faster-than-light transport. Obvious question is, where do I put this? Draconis

Can't tell, without actually reading it, but if it's put a strange place, it can at least be moved later. כסיף Cyp 08:53 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)


I was just wondering, is it OK to copy photos from other language wikipedias and use them on the English one, I cant see why it would be a problem but I was just making sure. G-Man 11:59 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, it's fine. -- Tim Starling 12:01 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Is it the User:The_Anomebot that is slowing down the server? -- User:Docu

I doubt it - it's only uploading one image every four minutes. The server is just slow sometimes. --Camembert
Why can't we hide its edits? -- Tarquin 17:36 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Apparently it's not registered as a bot yet. I suppose it needs a developer to fiddle with something (sounds like the sort of thing Brion would usually do, but he's away, I think). --Camembert
From User talk:The Anome it seems that the bot has indeed been given bot status, but image uploads aren't hidden, even when done by bots. Evercat 17:52 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Ah yes, I was going on the bot's user page. Hopefully somebody can fix that. --Camembert
Read somewhere else, can't remember where, or who from, that it is set as a bot, but the code for hiding bot edits doesn't hide picture uploads yet. כסיף Cyp 18:05 19 Jul 2003 (UTC) (Damn edit conflict... This reply would have sounded more intelligent if the couple of posts above weren't there...)

For most of the day (19 Jul 2003), it ran much faster: one image per minute [1] -- User_Docu

Even one edit a minute is no faster than a human could go (though admittedly, you'd have to be really committed to keep it up for that long). But I admit, I don't know for sure whether it's slowing the server down. It's not doing anything really remarkable if it is, though (User:Rambot went much much faster at its peak, though it was just uploading articles, not images). --Camembert 17:46 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Image uploads are probably more complex, possibly the length of Wikipedia:Upload_log slows down things as well. Maybe an administrator can archive it? -- User:Docu

Wikipedia:Upload_log is very slow to load, and currently just a blank page:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=windows-1252" http-equiv=Content-Type></HEAD> <BODY></BODY></HTML>
Might still be possible move it to an archive, by creating a suitable page-renaming url, but I'm not sure that's a good idea... כסיף Cyp 18:46 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The problem persisted after User:The_Anomebot stopped, thus it's likely that it was something else. In the meantime, the bot had just been more efficient getting to the site. -- User:Docu


I successfully uploaded , but it didn't show on recent changes, and instead of getting the "Image successfully uploaded" response to uploading, I got a page saying:


Database error

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A database query syntax error has occurred. The last attempted database query was: "UPDATE cur SET cur_timestamp='20030719174604', cur_user=7586, cur_user_text='Cyp', cur_text='Below is a list of the most recent file uploads. See also: [[Wikipedia:Upload log archive|Upload log archive]] <br> All times shown are server time ([[UTC]]). Current server time is: {{CURRENTTIME}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}. <ul><li>17:46 19 Jul 2003 [[User:Cyp|Cyp]] uploaded \"[[:Image:Erf.png|Erf.png]]\" <em>(Error function, with higher E, made by me.)</em></li> <li>17:45 19 Jul 2003 [[User:Jstanley01|Jstanley01]] uploaded \"[[:Image:G_and_b.JPG|G_and_b.JPG]]\"</li> <li>17:34 19 Jul 2003 [[User:Infrogmation|Infrogmation]] uploaded \"[[:Image:ZocaloMexicoCity1900.jpg|ZocaloMexicoCity1900.jpg]]\" <em>(Zocalo and Cathedral, Mexico City. From stereocard c 1900)</em></li> <li>17:24 19 Jul 2003 [[User:Jstanley01|Jstanley01]] uploaded \"[[:Image:Guns_and_butter.JPG|Guns_and_butter.JPG]]\" <em>(I produced this image)</em></li> <li>17:03 19 Jul 2003 [[User:The Anomebot|The Anomebot]] uploaded \"[[:Image:Map_of_Washington_highlighting_Cowlitz_County.png|Map_of_Washington_highlighting_Cowlitz_County.png]]\" <em>(Public domain map courtesy of [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/ The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin], modified to show counties. Released under GFDL. See [[Wikipedia:U.S. county map]]s.)</em></li> <li>17:02 19 Jul 2003 [[User:The Anomebot|The Anomebot]] uploaded

<Omitted about a megabyte of text here>

<em>(Picture of John Pilger, taken from Mr. Pilger\'s site, http://pilger.carlton.com/home/biography)</em></li> <li>04:53 1 Jul 2003 [[User:Seav|Seav]] uploaded \"[[:Image:Ph_seal_camarines_sur.png|Ph_seal_camarines_sur.png]]\" <em>(Provincial Seal of [[Camarines Sur]])</em></li> <li>04:47 1 Jul 2003 [[User:Hike395|Hike395]] uploaded \"[[:Image:TreeKill.jpg|TreeKill.jpg]]\" <em>(Mammoth Mountain tree kill area)</em></li> <li>01:05 1 Jul 2003 [[User:Mydogategodshat|Mydogategodshat]] uploaded \"[[:Image:Elastic_demand.png|Elastic_demand.png]]\" <em>(elastic demand)</em></li> <li>01:04 1 Jul 2003 [[User:Mydogategodshat|Mydogategodshat]] uploaded \"[[:Image:Price_skimming_small.png|Price_skimming_small.png]]\" <em>(price skimming)</em></li>', cur_comment='uploaded \"Erf.png\": Error function, with higher E, made by me.', cur_restrictions='sysop', inverse_timestamp='79969280825395' WHERE cur_id=62938" from within function "LogPage::saveContent". MySQL returned error "1153: Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet'".

From the start to the end, including the omitted text, is 1047870 bytes, surprisingly close to 220. Thought the error message was a bit too long to post all of it here. Haven't seen this error before. 21:21 June 10, 2025 is interesting to know, at least. כסיף Cyp 18:05 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

OK, I've flushed the current revision.--Eloquence 19:14 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hello, a relative newbie here. Could I get some advice on Robert M. Parker, Jr., please? The page that is there is an excellent biography, but there's quite a bit of other material that I would like to add. Are there copyright or other issues with rewriting what's there, since it was taken from the Parker website? Thanks in advance, Wnissen 19:11 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)


No - when it gets put into Wikipedia (with permission) the text becomes licensed under the GNU FDL. You can edit it freely. CGS 19:15 19 Jul 2003 (UTC).


Thanks very much for the help. I'll be putting some new content in soon. Wnissen 19:28 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Is the source code for the protected pages, particularly the main page, available? By 'source code' I mean the wiki markup, not html code. Thanks. IntMan

It is at Main Page/Temp. --Eloquence 00:36 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL ON TALK PAGES

Is it a violation of copyright law to copy two paragraphs from an external web page and put it on a Wikipedia article talk page. The purpose is to explain a word.

Thanks,..Norm2 05:50 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Smells like fair use to me. CGS 10:58 20 Jul 2003 (UTC).

Transitory information in entries

I was looking at the entry for Urban tribe which includes the following statement:

Urban Tribes are the rapidly growing groups of never-married's between the ages of 25 and 39 who gather in common-interest groups and enjoy the urban lifestyle.

My inclination is to remove the "rapidly growing" assertion. Even if Urban Tribes are or recently have been rapidly growing (probably subject to debate anyway), such a trend would have to be quite ephemeral. As such, I wonder if it is appropriate for an encyclopedia article. I'm curious how others feel about this. Bill 10:40 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Maybe it means that the groups grow rapidly, not the trend. :-) Seriously, I agree that it's not a good idea to have that kind of assertion in there. -- ESP 00:15 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Rather than deleting the "rapidly growing" claim, it would be interesting to know who claimed that the trend is growing, and when. AxelBoldt 17:57 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

United States Government publications and the public domain

Are government publications in the public domain by default? Does this cover postage stamps? I've seen lots of postage stamps around for older stuff. I just added this image, which is from 2003. Is this kosher? -- ESP 00:10 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What I've heard regarding postage stamps is the following:
The USPS hasn't been a government system for a while. I'm not sure about other postal services, but I suggest you do some research before posting any images. MB 01:26 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Yes, that's apparently so. Postage stamps produced since 1970 are under copyright of the USPS, and not in the public domain. Dang! Well, guess I better put it on the votes to delete page. -- ESP 02:41 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
This is a tricky point, and I've never seen a good legal opinion. In practice, the world's postal admins are perfectly happy to see images of stamps reproduced a lot, because that means increased visibility and more stamp sales. Pictures of stamps are in fact extremely widespread in print and online publications, and I've never heard of a postal admin making a copyvio complaint. On the other hand, the USPS does license the artwork to outfits that make tshirts, coffee mugs, one of the ornaments on my Xmas tree :-), etc. So my IANAL belief is that post-1970 images are completely defensible fair use if they are obviously photos/scans of physical stamps, but that it's not kosher to crop/scrub the image so as to obscure its stamply origin. Stamp images are often altered anyway (some jazz musician recently got the ciggy taken out of his mouth for instance), so it's better to present a stamp image as "this is how country X depicted Y politically correctly" :-) not "this is a archival-quality image". Stan 04:56 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Alright, I'm getting tired of reading it and not understanding it. what does IANAL mean? MB 14:13 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think it means "I am not a lawyer." —Frecklefoot 15:03 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think for fair use you have to be discussing the copyrighted work in and of itself, as part of the scholarship and criticism, not just using it as a decoration. I was using Image:John_cassavetes.jpg as a portrait, not discussing the stamp, so I think I still need to get it off the Wikipedia site.
Personally, I think fair use of works -- especially in their complete form -- is asking for trouble. And it makes Wikipedia less free, since our downstream users don't have the same rights under fair use that we have. But that's just me. -- ESP 20:37 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
see IANAL.

Searching questions

Maybe I'm missing something (highly likely), but it seems to me that searches in Wikipedia are still primitive in some ways. One thing I noticed recently is that searching seems to change if a new node is created.

For example, suppose I do a search for "yyxxxzzz" in Wikipedia. If there is no node for "yxxxzzz", then I will probably see a list of entries which contain this string. However, if I now create a node for "yyxxxzzz", and do the search again, the search will find the new node, and short-circuit all the other entries. While this is often useful, it is not always ideal, and makes it harder to find entries which should cross-refer to each other. Perhaps there are features of the search facility which I don't know about, but this behaviour does seem unhelpful. -- David Martland 10:39 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)


There is a difference between the behavior of the search button and the go button. See Wikipedia:Go button for details. --Eloquence 12:29 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
That's helpful, thank you. However, it doesn't solve all problems. I've been experimenting, and discovered this, for example. Try typing in "Theobald Boehm"

and then hit either Search or Go. Neither should find any page. Firstly, Theobald Boehm does not yet exist as a node in WP. However, it does exist as a proto-link on the page flutist. Surely this should be picked up? Perhaps the problem here is that the search term makes use of two words linked together? (There's some odd formatting here, not sure why!) -- David Martland 12:52 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The reason for that is that the fulltext search is currently disabled on the English Wikipedia for performance reasons. It's still dog slow, though ..--Eloquence 13:00 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What was the purpose of the conversion script that ran in Feb 2002? For example, this edit on Nancy Sinatra. You can't that tell me that someone wrote a bot to replace all instances of "lounge crooner" with "singer". CGS 22:29 21 Jul 2003 (UTC).

importing all articles from the UseModWiki script. We're past 32k. I thought this question was FAQed. If not, could you make it so? :-) -- Tarquin 22:32 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It would be really helpful if we could protect the village pump during archiving and just one person archives it. Otherwise the edit conflicts make it nigh on impossible. Good idea? CGS 22:41 21 Jul 2003 (UTC). [[Wikipedia:Village pump

It might be good to put a note with a timestamp at the bottom saying it's being archived and please don't edit for a few minutes, then remove it when you're done. I'm kind of against protecting it, since invariably someone will forget to un-protect it. Edit conflicts are annoying, but they aren't really that hard to work around if you're just deleting stuff that no one's editing. -- Merphant 04:29 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Speaking of which... -- Merphant 04:41 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well now that I've calmed down a bit about what made me quit - I want to not let a couple of people ruin my participation in this interesting project. I want to make a suggestion to fidgety busy-bodies. It won't hurt the project to wait more than 2 minutes before you start stepping all over something someone else is in the current process of working on. In my case as a newer user, it may take me an hour, but it is satisfying when I can accomplish it and then "set it free to the wolves". During the process helpful hints are welcome, but constantly having a tug-of-war of working on something, edit conflict, reverts, repeat... is tiresome. Have a bit of patience. Let me quote the helpful hints I got before I threw up my hands and said, "this isn't worth it.": Dmsar 01:05 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You've created an article at Wikipedia:Bulletin Board. This is in the Wikipedia namespace, which meas it's for utility pages. There was an article for bulleten board already at Bulletin Board, which you have redirected. Why is this? Mintguy
Material moved from incorrectly named page:
---
1. album by The Partridge Family
2. Hacker jargon
3. Standar usage of bulletin board
This is a disambiguation page. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link.
What is this for? Mintguy 23:13 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
---
Are you trying to start an article? You've put it in the wrong place. Meta pages are not for articles, but for information relating the the operation of this site. Put you article at Bulletin board. and sign your name with 4 "~". --Jiang 23:27 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
---
Nonono!!!! This doesn't belong here. Why put it on a utility page? Plus, you redirect should be #REDIRECT[[Wikipedia:Bulletin Board]] for it to work. Please move the contents of this page (minus the discussion) there and this one will be deleted. --Jiang 23:47 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
---
End of moved material Enchanter 23:54 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
---

Ordered lists

archive to Wikipedia:Feature requests in a few days


Does anyone else think it would be a good idea to modify the default stylesheet to add space between ordered list items (see User:Merphant/sandbox)? It would make paragraphs in ordered lists much easier to read. For simple bulleted lists we don't have that problem, since we can just insert a space between bullets. -- Merphant 04:38 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It does look much better and more readable, certainly.
James F. 07:04 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I agree. I definitely think it should apply to bulleted lists also. Inserting a space (in the wiki-code) between bullet points actually causes the software to generate multiple lists of one item, which is silly. -- Wapcaplet 10:27 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I like the 0.4 em spacing option over 0 (hard to read) and 1 (ugly and a space hog). --mav
I've mentioned it on Wikitech-l. -- Merphant 22:34 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Cleaning the pump

archive to Wikipedia talk:Village pump in a few days

To whoever put the 'move to Template:Page x when done' above discussions, that was a great idea. Let's all do this in the future, if you can think of where to put it. It makes cleaning the pump a lot easier. -- Merphant 05:08 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Decipher the Code

archive to Wikipedia:Even more bad jokes and other deleted nonsense in a few days???


)> () ))) )') _ ))) ) )- )-( _ )- )-( (- _ )') (- ))) _ ))) () )' ), )> _ () )' )> (- )'

- (according to page history: User:209.78.16.178 04:06 17 Jul 2003 (UTC))

Does it say "All hail the new world order"? כסיף Cyp 12:46 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Blame

Has anyone ever tried to implment an equivalent of CVS blame for the revision history page? If you don't know what I mean, it's like a diff, but shows the current revision and who added what to it when (sections of text are highlighted with a user and date). Do people think this would be a goode idea? I could have a stab at it myself, perhaps. CGS 15:40 22 Jul 2003 (UTC).

Yoism evangelism

User:68.162.218.43 (Contributions) added Yoism and Yo, apparently an "opensource religion", and is now inserting "see also" references to it in numerous places, from Atheism to Deism to Agnosticism and Humanism. These edits are factually correct, insofar as "Yoism" appears to be considered a religion at least by some, and some of its tenets are indeed similar to some of those other "isms", but it still seems out of place, because it's so obscure as to not really merit a mention in the articles on more well-known topics (IMO). Do we have a policy on removing factually correct but obscure/irrelevant information (especially when that information appears to be added by an overzealous fan of the topic in question)? I could go through and revert all the edits, but wanted to ask what others though first. --Delirium 18:45 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, just MHO, but yeah, I think reverting is the right thing to do unless the reference is highly relavent. But you might want to wait for other's input first. —Frecklefoot 18:57 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Oops, didn't see this. I've already done most of the reversion (one by one, not sysop-fast-revert :-) Evercat 19:01 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
A quick google search find that this is idiosyncratic nonsense "open+source+religion"%20yo and should be deleted Mintguy 19:04 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I'm not sure how this link demonstrates that it is idiosyncratic nonsense. A better search would be to look for Yoism, since Yo is such a common word
"open source religion yoism" brings up 13 hits. Yoism itself brings up little over a hundred. Evercat 19:13 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Well I'm the over zealous fan. He he. I only put the links in where I they where relevant, and I thought people would indeed be interested in them. Perhaps instead of removing them, it would make more sense to move them to a less prominent point on the page. Someone who is interested in Humanism, Atheism, Deism, seems like there is a high likely hood that they would be interested in reading a little bit more about a Religious philosophy based on these things. I think what we want to avoid is the implication that Yoism is more important than it is. On the other hand it seems to maintain some (less prominent) link on each page is called for because it is relevant, people may want to find it.
Well I see the Yoism page has been deleted without any real conversation. This seems unfortunate because it was an honest attempt to provide information about an inovative religious community that really does pertain to the topics linked to it. If there is a little known scientific theory, does that mean the theory is invalid, or does not deserve a mention in appropriate ways. Little things are not by their very nature irrelevant. They are just little.

Anon user 64.119.193.140 is adding links to http://www.maintour.com pages for every Southern California town. They seem borderline to me, because the pages contain a tiny bit of encyclopedia info and massive advertising. Are these worth keeping, or are we just being used to generate traffic? Stan 19:24 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It looks like the IP address belongs to Grand Pacifc Resorts. So it would seem they are trying to use the 'pedia to beef up business? I'd revert the edits--they don't add any useful information. —Frecklefoot 19:44 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Alright, I have put a temporary block on the IP address. Feel free to unblock it at anytime. MB 19:55 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm at lost with Jennifer Lopez, a presumably young enthusiast is adding POV material under anonymous IPs 67.39.46.8 and 68.78.49.170, and my interest in J.Lo. is too low for be to bother correcting this for too long. --FvdP 19:37 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Could a mathematician take a look at 1 E21. Doesn't the number actually belong at 1 E22? Or maybe Order of magnitude (numbers)? Evercat 21:06 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm almost certain that 7*1022 is bigger than 1022, I'll change the range to from 1021 to 1024... כסיף Cyp 21:47 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)~

I've seen "Academy Award" and "Oscar" used interchangeably (for example, in the new article on Frances McDormand). Should they be? Most people use the words interchangeably, but I didn't know if we ought to choose one for simplicity's sake, and to limit confusion for the many people worldwide who pay little attention to the AMPAS's awards, let alone their nickname? Jwrosenzweig 21:19 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, at least in the same article with all parts written by the same person. Being properly chastened, I've changed Frances McDormand accordingly. Bill 21:31 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have a convention on references where we site them within the text like so: [2] Pizza Puzzle

The convention (unwritten as far as I know) is to have naked wikirefs within the text that are then numbered. All other external links go in the External link section. --mav

But how do we number them? If somebody adds one, its easy for all the numbers to get changed up. Also, it might be useful to have a link to an article on the source.

Don't they automatically number themselves? Lemme try... [3] [4] [5]... yep, they sure do. -- Wapcaplet 22:50 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But mav says not to do it that way... Pizza Puzzle or are those naked wikirefs? Pizza Puzzle

Which reminds me: Is there any way of inserting an anchor <a name="foo">bar</a> in Wiki text? I've looked in obvious places like Manual of Style and Cite Your Sources, but it doesn't seem to be there.
What I'm thinking of is the difficulty of citing specific material from a long printed source, meaning a book. If you have several references, you don't want to repeat the whole gory bibliographic listing in each place. If you put that in a Bibliography, there's the problem of putting a page reference in each place while linking it to the proper item in the bibliography. I see that the Cite entry suggests a Wiki entry for the book itself; but is that really what you want for every work cited? What I'd rather see is something like
...not putting him to torture (NEL, pp. 400, 406). On the other hand,...
Bibliography
<a name="NEL">NEL</a>: Orio Giacchia, Nel Terzo centenario..., Università Cattolica etc etc


where a click on the NEL link would take you to the biblio item to find the publication data. One could use this reference style without the hyperlink, as is done in many books, but that seems so twentieth-century. Any comments?
Dandrake 23:02 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I personally like the [1] [2] citation style (the standard in many journals), with a bibliographic listing at the end. Auto-hyperlinks and auto-numbering would be helpful, but would require code changes. See Depleted Uranium for an example of doing this manually, which has the problem of re-numbering your references when you add another one anywhere other than the end of the list. --Delirium 23:13 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

User:127 protected Talk:New Imperialism, apparently to prevent me from discussing the page with other users. He also moved a huge section of text written yesterday (and today) to an "archive", the entire page he moved was nothing but discussion regarding potentional changes to "his" page; something he apparently doesnt want happening. Pizza Puzzle

Now he just protected New Imperialism because I moved a "see also" out of the middle of nowhere and put it somewhere visible. Is this guy the owner of the site or something, I don't think he likes me. Pizza Puzzle

Wikipedia_talk:Protected_page might be a better place to discuss this. The page history makes it look like there's an edit war going on. If this is the case, and 172 is involved in this, then he should not be protecting the page anyway. <quote>If you are an admin and you want a page in an edit war in which you are involved to be protected, it is recommended that you contact another admin and ask them to protect the page for you. (from :Wikipedia:Protected_page)</quote> Angela 23:08 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
For the record, I just unprotected both pages. I am, frankly, at a loss as to why they were protected in the first place (especially the talk page). --Camembert

I suggest we create a formal mechanism to declare an edit war and rules to control it. We ban those who disregard the rules. When there is an edit war, each side should create its version like New Imperialism/temp1 and New Imperialism/temp2 and let others to choose which one is better-through a voting system maybe. No matter what the voting result is, the ones involving in the edit war should not start the war again unless they get new ideas. During the edit war, the article may be protected--not because we want to ban somebody from modify it, but because we don't want the edit war affecting the general public. Of course, we have to choose a mediator acceptable to both sides to oversee the edit war. Wshun

We have Wikipedia:Current disputes over articles to report "edit wars". I'm not sure if a set of formalised rules on how to handle them would be possible, but feel free to have a go (you could start with a note on Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia:Current disputes over articles, perhaps) - everyone would be grateful to you, I'm sure, if you could come up with a workable system. --Camembert
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_archive_2004-09-26&oldid=1182459"